At present, substantially two convertiplane configurations are known: “Tilt Rotor”, in which the wings remain substantially fixed, and only the motor-rotor assemblies rotate with their nacelles; and “Tilt Wing”, in which the rotor attitude is adjusted by rotating the wing-propulsion system assembly as a whole.
A tilt-wing convertiplane, i.e. of the type to which the present invention refers, is known from EP-1057724, which describes an aircraft or convertiplane comprising two motor-rotor assemblies, each fitted to a respective wing portion, which is mounted to rotate about an axis crosswise to the longitudinal axis of the aircraft, to selectively set the respective motor-rotor assembly to a helicopter configuration or aeroplane configuration.
Though undoubtedly valid both structurally and functionally, the above known convertiplane has several drawbacks by being complicated in design and therefore relatively expensive to produce. This is mainly due to the presence of two separately controlled rotating wing portions; and two motor-rotor assemblies, which must be synchronized with one another and, having to rotate the rotors in opposite directions, cannot be perfectly identical.